TdF -- ZDF has pulled its coverage!

[Trevor A Panther]

I am watching today's highlights and heard that German ZDF have stopped
coverage of the TdF and support for their team due to doping in pre race
training

It was then followed by a number of other commentators of other TV Networks
saying that they wouldn't do it.

Perhaps if the TV coverage for this highly overhyped event, where drug
enhanced performances seem to be the rule (?), were pulled internationally it
might just be brought back to the reality of cycling!

The race is so artificially contrived and totally dependant on the money that
is generated by these big teams that belies comprehension that people take it
seriously.

But it generates a huge amount of money in France and they will never stop
coverage!

Whatever your feeling about "sport", this matter of drug enhanced
performances is rife throughout "sports" and due to the amounts of money
involved!. You can see it in every sport that you see!

It is why I cannot work up much enthusiasm for watching much international
"sport"

Sorry to continue to be such an old f*rt!


--
Trevor A Panther
In South Yorkshire,
England, United Kingdom.
www.tapan.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

 

[wafflycat]

"Trevor A Panther" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> Whatever your feeling about "sport", this matter of drug enhanced
> performances is rife throughout "sports" and due to the amounts of money
> involved!. You can see it in every sport that you see!
>
> It is why I cannot work up much enthusiasm for watching much
> international "sport"
>
> Sorry to continue to be such an old f*rt!
>

*Any* sport at 'elite' level, national level, never mind international is
likely to have a drugs problem - overt or covert.

 

[Danny Colyer]

On 19/07/2007 20:05, Trevor A Panther wrote:
> Sorry to continue to be such an old f*rt!

Don't be, you do it so well ;-)

--
Danny Colyer <URL:http://www.colyer.plus.com/danny/>
Reply address is valid, but that on my website is checked more often
"Daddy, put that down. Daddy, put that down. Daddy, put that down.
Daddy, why did you put that down?" - Charlie Colyer, age 2

 

[Roger Merriman]

wafflycat <w*a*ff£y£cat*@£btco*nn£ect.com> wrote:

> "Trevor A Panther" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> >
> > Whatever your feeling about "sport", this matter of drug enhanced
> > performances is rife throughout "sports" and due to the amounts of money
> > involved!. You can see it in every sport that you see!
> >
> > It is why I cannot work up much enthusiasm for watching much
> > international "sport"
> >
> > Sorry to continue to be such an old f*rt!
> >
>
> *Any* sport at 'elite' level, national level, never mind international is
> likely to have a drugs problem - overt or covert.

quite, while i am a sport free zone, to single out cycling doesn't sound
likely.

roger
--
www.rogermerriman.com

 

[MJ Ray]

Trevor A Panther <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am watching today's highlights and heard that German ZDF have stopped
> coverage of the TdF and support for their team due to doping in pre race
> training

Doesn't matter too much for anything other that demolishing ZDF's daytime
viewing figures, as Germany's Sat.1 and Pro7 have already started live
coverage, while ZDF seemed to have some soap on today instead.

> It was then followed by a number of other commentators of other TV Networks
> saying that they wouldn't do it.
>
> Perhaps if the TV coverage for this highly overhyped event, where drug
> enhanced performances seem to be the rule (?), were pulled internationally it
> might just be brought back to the reality of cycling!

Doping has been going on for years (see recent admissions) and ZDF
covered it then, but now cycling is finally getting its house in order
with more systematic testing, ZDF drops coverage. It's a strong message:
don't test, else ZDF will drop you.

I was surprised that the ZDF producer claimed that they will drop other
sports that suffer doping scandals. I see ZDF's current sport coverage
seems to include the well-known never-drugged sport of boxing...

Incredulous,
--
MJ Ray - see/vidu http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Experienced webmaster-developers for hire http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
Also: statistician, sysadmin, online shop builder, workers co-op.
Writing on koha, debian, sat TV, Kewstoke http://mjr.towers.org.uk/

 

[elyob]

"MJ Ray" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Trevor A Panther <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I am watching today's highlights and heard that German ZDF have stopped
>> coverage of the TdF and support for their team due to doping in pre race
>> training
>
> Doesn't matter too much for anything other that demolishing ZDF's daytime
> viewing figures, as Germany's Sat.1 and Pro7 have already started live
> coverage, while ZDF seemed to have some soap on today instead.
>
>> It was then followed by a number of other commentators of other TV
>> Networks
>> saying that they wouldn't do it.
>>
>> Perhaps if the TV coverage for this highly overhyped event, where drug
>> enhanced performances seem to be the rule (?), were pulled
>> internationally it
>> might just be brought back to the reality of cycling!
>
> Doping has been going on for years (see recent admissions) and ZDF
> covered it then, but now cycling is finally getting its house in order
> with more systematic testing, ZDF drops coverage. It's a strong message:
> don't test, else ZDF will drop you.
>
> I was surprised that the ZDF producer claimed that they will drop other
> sports that suffer doping scandals. I see ZDF's current sport coverage
> seems to include the well-known never-drugged sport of boxing...
>

That's golf f***ed then, well according to Palmer ...

 

[marc]

MJ Ray wrote:

>
> I was surprised that the ZDF producer claimed that they will drop other
> sports that suffer doping scandals. I see ZDF's current sport coverage
> seems to include the well-known never-drugged sport of boxing...
>


And Golf, that's the sport where the PGA are trying to get a drugs
policy in place for 2008, just a policy mind you, not a system of
testing or regulation.

 

[coyoteboy]

Trevor A Panther wrote:
> I am watching today's highlights and heard that German ZDF have stopped
> coverage of the TdF and support for their team due to doping in pre race
> training
>
> It was then followed by a number of other commentators of other TV
> Networks saying that they wouldn't do it.
>
> Perhaps if the TV coverage for this highly overhyped event, where drug
> enhanced performances seem to be the rule (?), were pulled
> internationally it might just be brought back to the reality of cycling!
>
> The race is so artificially contrived and totally dependant on the money
> that is generated by these big teams that belies comprehension that
> people take it seriously.
>
> But it generates a huge amount of money in France and they will never
> stop coverage!
>
> Whatever your feeling about "sport", this matter of drug enhanced
> performances is rife throughout "sports" and due to the amounts of money
> involved!. You can see it in every sport that you see!
>
> It is why I cannot work up much enthusiasm for watching much
> international "sport"
>
> Sorry to continue to be such an old f*rt!
>
>

I dont know why they dont just enforce 100% coverage drugs tests in
competitions like this. It'd be a fairly quick way of getting it back to
real racing and honesty.

 

[dkahn400]

On Jul 23, 1:43 pm, coyoteboy <[email protected]> wrote:

> I dont know why they dont just enforce 100% coverage drugs tests in
> competitions like this. It'd be a fairly quick way of getting it back to
> real racing and honesty.

No it wouldn't. Doping control is a complex business. The alleged
positive result relates to a sample given by Patrik Sinkewitz on 8
June.

--
Dave...

 

[Tony Raven]

coyoteboy wrote:
>
> I dont know why they dont just enforce 100% coverage drugs tests in
> competitions like this. It'd be a fairly quick way of getting it back to
> real racing and honesty.

First you would need to clean up the drugs testing so that the athletes
can trust in it. Otherwise 100% testing would just be a career ending
lottery for both clean and dirty athletes.

Tony

 

[Simon Brooke]

in message <[email protected]>, coyoteboy
('[email protected]') wrote:

> I dont know why they dont just enforce 100% coverage drugs tests in
> competitions like this. It'd be a fairly quick way of getting it back to
> real racing and honesty.

Drugs testing is an arms race. Drugs (and other performance enhancing
techniques, like autologous reinfusion) get developed before tests for
them do. So there will always be drugs for which there are no tests yet -
and drugs which are not banned yet.

EPO, for example, which is the drug of choice for endurance athletes,
currently doesn't have a reliable test. There is a test, developed by the
same French lab which carried out the Landis tests last year, but it is
difficult to carry out and appears to suffer from false positives (e.g.
the case of Rutger Beke). At present there is no accepted way of detecting
autologous reinfusions.

The blood stored by Eufemio Fuentes appears to have been intended for
autologous reinfusion. Ivan Basso claims that he had blood stored, but had
never reinfused any. There is absolutely no way of proving this either way
(except through a systematic audit of Fuentes' records, if they exist and
if we believe them), because the blood was his own in the first place.

So - you could test all the cyclists in the peloton for all the drugs for
which reliable tests exist, and you still wouldn't catch the ones using
EPO, or autologous reinfusion, or a variety of other things. Meantime, if
you included tests for things like EPO, you would end the careers of a
number of perfectly innocent people.

Many things a rider may use are eliminated from the body in the course of a
single day. Most of the things a rider may use are hormones and chemicals
which exist naturally in the body, so just finding them doesn't prove
they're injected - and, in the particular case of testosterone, varies
widely in level from one individual to another. Which is why the tests for
these things are not tests to see whether they're there, but tests to
check the ratio between one thing and its biological precursors and
successors - and these tests are often very delicate and very hard to
interpret, as the Landis case shows.

--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
;; If any council in the country has anything to say to cyclists
;; about cycle paths, it should be: "We are terribly, terribly sorry."
- Zoe Williams, The Guardian, 13th Sept 2006

 

[Membrane]

Simon Brooke <[email protected]> wrote:

>EPO, for example, which is the drug of choice for endurance athletes,
>currently doesn't have a reliable test. There is a test, developed by the
>same French lab which carried out the Landis tests last year, but it is
>difficult to carry out and appears to suffer from false positives (e.g.
>the case of Rutger Beke). At present there is no accepted way of detecting
>autologous reinfusions.

I vaguely recall from the discussions when EPO first publicly emerged on
the cycling scene that it's benefit is to get riders to recover quicker
than is naturally possible.

Perhaps race organizers have a role to play in the fight against drugs
by not staging events in which above human recovery pays off. Multi
consecutive day events may do just that. Perhaps inserting a rest day
between every race day would allow normal human recovery to reduce the
advantage that EPO currently provides to such an extent that EPO use
would become unattractive.

--
Membrane

 

[Peter Clinch]

Membrane wrote:

> Perhaps race organizers have a role to play in the fight against drugs
> by not staging events in which above human recovery pays off. Multi
> consecutive day events may do just that. Perhaps inserting a rest day
> between every race day would allow normal human recovery to reduce the
> advantage that EPO currently provides to such an extent that EPO use
> would become unattractive.

On the one hand, yes, but on the other, with something like Le Tour, the
attempt to fix it just breaks it (IMHO) in a different way. The nature
of a multi-stage like that is relentless. It's also unfair to those
athletes who /naturally/ recover better, and are thus better suited to
that kind of race.
But I haven't got any better suggestions :-(

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email protected] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

 

[marc]

Membrane wrote:
> Simon Brooke <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> EPO, for example, which is the drug of choice for endurance athletes,
>> currently doesn't have a reliable test. There is a test, developed by the
>> same French lab which carried out the Landis tests last year, but it is
>> difficult to carry out and appears to suffer from false positives (e.g.
>> the case of Rutger Beke). At present there is no accepted way of detecting
>> autologous reinfusions.
>
> I vaguely recall from the discussions when EPO first publicly emerged on
> the cycling scene that it's benefit is to get riders to recover quicker
> than is naturally possible.
>
> Perhaps race organizers have a role to play in the fight against drugs
> by not staging events in which above human recovery pays off. Multi
> consecutive day events may do just that. Perhaps inserting a rest day
> between every race day would allow normal human recovery to reduce the
> advantage that EPO currently provides to such an extent that EPO use
> would become unattractive.
>
Or maybe the organisers could arrange for watchers to patrol hotel
corridors at 3am listening for alarm clocks?

 

[Ace]

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 08:27:46 +0100, Membrane <[email protected]>
wrote:

>I vaguely recall from the discussions when EPO first publicly emerged on
>the cycling scene

What, in the 1950s you mean?

>that it's benefit is to get riders to recover quicker
>than is naturally possible.

That may be partially true, but it does actually enhance performance
in itself as well, and it's that which is its main perceived benefit.

--
Ace in Alsace - brucedotrogers a.t rochedotcom